Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs

Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease and Pushing Drugs

2006, Health  -   20 Comments
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Ratings: 6.74/10 from 105 users.

Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing DrugsBig Bucks, Big Pharma pulls back the curtain on the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry to expose the insidious ways that illness is used, manipulated, and in some instances created, for capital gain. Focusing on the industry's marketing practices, media scholars and health professionals help viewers understand the ways in which direct-to-consumer (DTC) pharmaceutical advertising glamorizes and normalizes the use of prescription medication, and works in tandem with promotion to doctors.

Combined, these industry practices shape how both patients and doctors understand and relate to disease and treatment. Ultimately, Big Bucks, Big Pharma challenges us to ask important questions about the consequences of relying on a for-profit industry for our health and well-being. (Excerpt from mediaed.org).

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Sky
Sky
6 months ago

Had to watch this for a class and is one of the most eye opening documentaries I have ever seen. More than 20 years later, many of these points are still true

ANNA
ANNA
1 year ago

A wonderful informative article. Would these same people please comment on what the believe happened to the Covid research, and if the research was also again manipulated by the drug companies and the media

Aristotle
Aristotle
2 years ago

THE BEST LIFE IS TO LIVE CLOSER TO NATURE AND AWAY FROM ALL BIG MEGA CORPORATIONS....they only care about profit......fresh air and fresh water is what you need to stay healthy your entire life.

Ira (Bill) Bingham
Ira (Bill) Bingham
5 years ago

Big Pharma got it's butt kicked by the E-Cig industry! Big time, because E-cigs are the absolute, hands down, no question, best method of getting off tobacco cigarettes.
Now Mien Kamph Big Pharma is attempting to discredit the successful E-cig industry by pointing fingers at the Nicotine in E-cigs which is 800% less that traditional tobacco cigs.
Their attack centers upon the harmful effect of nicotine on teenagers. The nicotine
is not what kills, it is only put in E-Cig juice to help smokers wane of carcinogen laden
cigarettes. The fact of the matter is tobacco cig use by youth has dropped by 21% since the year 2000 and Big Pharma investors are losing money. Teenagers are now used as
an attack shield by the medical community to falsely discredit an honest and successful
method of getting off a proven killer.

Noel Robertson
Noel Robertson
5 years ago

I love it need to be told to our citizens and try to educate them on how their decisions can causes consequences in third lives.

John smith
John smith
6 years ago

i have a loved one whose whole life is ruined by pychotropic drugs she never needed. watching her suffer to quit ...
may not make it she is that sick. a once vibrant human being destroyed. do not use these ...get talk therapy anything else but phycotropic drugs. they are poison

Abamovich
Abamovich
12 years ago

People just have to wake up and realize that drugs do not heal, they just mask, only our bodies can heal and we just have to get out of the way and let them do what they are designed to do. Health is our natural state, we don't need drugs at all, the only way back to health if it's lost is clean, healthy food, rest, exercise, fresh air. People are brainwashed into believing it has to be a complicated drug to fix a problem. Yet, it's the most simple things that can fix ANY disease. I look forward to the days when common sense comes back into medicine, natural healing is back where it belongs, the mainstream and drugs and pharmaceuticals are in the ineffective 'alternative' basket.

L0LAW0NKA
L0LAW0NKA
12 years ago

It's a damn cycle. You take one medication for an illness and then you need another for one side effect of it, and so on and so forth... Ugh XPP

toddy
toddy
12 years ago

It's disturbing how some of the side effects are much more serious than said disorder. Such as liver damage, increased bleeding,thoughts of suicide, sudden death, vampirism, lycanthropey( just kidding on the last two or am I). The one that makes me wonder what the F is the one that says if you are pregnant , or thinking of becoming pregnant don't take it( wow the power of thought and this drug combined. LOL in a sick and twisted way) or even handle it.
As for Candela and Healer they are on the right track. The only side effects from cannabis are increased appetite( when doing so stay away from the junk food as for the food additives stay away from them even more, nothing artifical should cross your lips and go into your stomache ever), sh.. itty grin, better sleep( with a well rested body it has amazing healing properties), momentary increase in blood pressure, happier thoughts( see grinning statment) .
Lets go back to trusting Mother Nature for our ailments instead of some unnatural chemistry experiment. In other words if you can't pronounce it or has more letters than the alphabet you probaly shouldn't take it.

Hersey
Hersey
13 years ago

Great documentary. Healer knows the secret.

Healer
Healer
13 years ago

Heh, this is how the western civilization is in modern medicine. I don't remember if it was Vladimir Putin or Dmitri Medvedev, but one of them said that at least Russia is honest about it's corruption. Here's a hint for anyone not believing this doc: pain is just a signal gone from your nerves system to your brain saying that everything isn't ok, and that you can pull through emotional issues without succumbing to the pill use. You just need to open the emotional lock inside. I know it's damn painful, but pain is a part of life. It's been for millennias. Are we suddenly so weak we can't take it anymore? No way.

You can kill your pain with sheer force of will. If it doesn't work, take the time home from work or school, it's perfectly legal and your doctor must give it for you if you're unable to participate. You do NOT have to buy their pills for that sake, no matter what the doctor says. Just fix your lifestyle, take some hemp for your pain if you can't sleep, organically grown indica strain preferrably (if you hesitate, remember that this is the medicine people have used for 5000+´years, not burana), then go to sleep. This has a much less likely failure percentage.

You'd be surprised how much that single plant can cure. And no, you don't have to smoke it and get high, just make some oil out of it and eat it or rub it to the painful area... and there are species of hemp that you don't get so high from, yet sustaining their medicinal value. Why aren't they available to the general public? For the exactly same reasons as you got so much vain and expensive pills: to make certain fat rich b@#$%&*$ fatter and richer.

carlos1234
carlos1234
14 years ago

very interesting deffinitly opened my eyes after i watched it....but it get kinda dull towards the end

Hani
Hani
14 years ago

You can read more astonishing facts about Drug companies in Marcia Angel's book "The truth about the drug companies and how they deceive us" .

mark
mark
14 years ago

An excellent documentary that anyone interested in health should definitely watch.

I found it absoultely shocking how immoral and focused only on profit, (not helping people)these drug companies are.

Once again, thanks for posting Vlatko; keep up the good work!

Leon
Leon
14 years ago

Doesn't pull any punches, especially about the effects of advertising. Interesting, however, that two of the experts specifically didn't blame the problems on the companies themselves, although these same experts outlined many fraudulent and deceptive practices the companies engage in, but on the US government... that the companies have bought.

Mike
Mike
14 years ago

Very informative,goes in to depth on subjects we as consumers may already have some knowledge of. Id recommend this video to everyone!